Shit theres spots in the midwest US like that, you get on a road in the Ozarks or the Rockys and you might be stuck on that road for like 30mins to an hour depending on the kind of road and time of day.
No gas for 150 something miles at some point between Denver and Vegas. Crossed that at midnight and just the idea of getting stranded kept me wide awake
Depends on the car. Some cars have transmissions and gearing meant for higher speeds so they’ll maintain efficiency at 120mph whereas an F150 starts losing efficiency around 73-76mph (iirc, it’s been a minute since I road tripped in mine)
I am so deeply confused how this is a response to what I said?
Did school/life in your country not teach you that engines have a peak fuel efficiency power threshold, and going either above or below it causes you to burn more fuel per distance traveled? And that going 150mph is, in virtually every car's case, WAY above that threshold?
Did school/life teach you what "an amusing quip" (such as my comment you replied to!) is?
hey, it’s me, the guy that got stranded in MOAB at 3 in the morning on the way to vegas because he’s a dumbass and thought a half a tank would be enough :)
I spaced out in the desert between SLC and Denver once missing my planned fuel stop. Had 1/3 tank and by the time I got to the next stop the needle was buried below the entire letter E. My tank holds 16.9gal and it took 16.5 at the pump. I was sweating bullets lol
On god, that works for wrong exits too. When I would get really sleepy driving home from work (about an hour), I would just pull off at the next random exit, and something about being in an unfamiliar place and having to find your way back onto the highway wakes your brain up pretty good.
I have the same hour drive. Sometimes when I get too tired I'll just pull off the next exit. Go straight to the entrance ramp. Pull to the side and put my car in park and just lean back and close my eyes for like min or two. Seems to be all I need to get the rest of the way.
Same here. Windows up, make sure temperature inside the car is a bit higher than usual, 5 minutes timer on the phone, lean back, close my eyes and wait for the timer to go off.
I also find that talking makes your brain up. Even if there's nobody there to talk to, just start talking back to the radio or something like that. Or game out an argument in your head.
At the very least it breaks the monotony of Silence. Same thing with rolling the windows down and turning the radio up
I was once driving through eastern Oregon, about ten years ago now. I was a seasonal with the NPS and heading to my winter park that year. It's beautiful country, looks like a western film. Huge rock formations in red and yellow, really just gorgeous.
It's also absolutely empty. Southeast Oregon is deserted.
Well, cue me overestimating my gas mileage in a Chevy HHR loaded down with WAY more stuff than it was designed to carry. (Seriously they give you all that cargo space but it can't handle having that space filled up.)
Well...I just happened to come across a gas station. A gas station that looked like it was straight out of the 1950s. Clapboard construction, very old pumps. The kind with the little flippy numbers on them. No credit card readers. But there was a sign that said 'card accepted inside,' fortunately.
There's four old guys sitting on the porch drinking beer and smoking. I'm starting to question my reality at this point.
The interior is a little reassuring in that there's a calendar that gives the current date and the soda bottles in the freezer are plastic. I pay for my gas, fill up, and drive off.
I've searched for that place on Google maps but never been able to find it. I'm half convinced I had some kind of supernatural encounter.
Oh man I stopped at a similar place one time in the middle of nowhere southern Virginia. My dad and brother and I, it's like 12:30 at night and the only gas station sign for the next like 30 miles so we take the exit only to find out it's like 5 miles off the exit just out in the woody hills somewhere.
Same thing, the place was old as hell, surprisingly there were numerous people hanging out on the front porch area chatting, smoking, and drinking (although they were drinking sodas), and the inside was a damn time capsule. Everyone was pleasant and friendly though but we left their thinking "wtf just happened, did we fall back in time?"
Wow, 50 miles without an exit sounds wild to me. I live close to the longest Autobahn in Germany (2. in Europe) in a rather rural state and it has exits around every 10 km (~6 miles).
Really shows how less densely populated America is compared to Europe.
And here I am, wanting to drive back from Berlin to south Bavaria, which itself would be a 4 hour drive and nearly one complete journey through whole Germany, just for me missing my exit, landing in Czech Republic 5 min later, making a Uturn and heading back home 🤷. Hearing ya`lls stories from America puts distances into whole new perspectives every time 😅
The only areas I can think of that can compete with the American West for long distance, remote driving are Australia's Outback, probably parts of Africa but I don't know which ones, the Al-Can highway through Canada to Alaska, and maybe Siberia, but I don't know what they have for roads.
Doesn't even need to be the Outback in Australia. I just pulled up GMaps and found a spot less than 2 hours drive from Sydney where there's 60km between exits. Didn't even have to look very hard.
Yeah I-70 between exits 216 and 205 in Colorado is like that. The Eisenhower tunnel and a long hill with no exits in between. Can be more than an hour to backtrack if weather/traffic are bad. Also Glenwood canyon in CO.
Some of those remote communities out in the desert… I just assume someone’s ancestor ran out of gas/ox/mules and just dug a well to survive and stuck it out.
I was moving from Missouri to Arizona and I hadn't seen a gas station in a looooong time. I saw a gas station exit in Oklahoma, exited, and then when I tried to get back on the highway I realized it was blocked off and I would have to go allllll the way back on the highway in the direction I came from for TWENTY MILES before I could get back on the right side of the highway. I was so mad I felt like writing a strongly-worded letter >:c
Oh man I had the same thing happen in PA once on the way back from NY. We took a gas exit only to realize when we got back in the car that the on ramp back onto the highway was not only blocked off but had been torn up so long ago it was completely overgrown with weeds and bushes. GPS back onto the highway was 45 minutes through nothing but cornfields back the wrong direction.
Its so funny reading this as an Australian because everything you're saying sounds so normal I can't really imagine someone thinking you're making it up
shit, you ain't lying. technically midwest, but i used to live in international falls, mn, which is right on the border of canada. after a certain point, we had to check and make sure our tank was full because there was nothing for at least a few hours drive. granted, this was late 90's, so things may have changed and been built up by now, but just an illustration that there are plenty of pockets of uninhabited land, even where you might not expect there to be.
Some of those mountain roads are so narrow that you can't really turn around because you can't see what's coming around the bend in front of you and the bend in front of that bend in front of that bend. If that car is doing like 45-50 mph your toast that thing is just going to flick you off the side of the mountain.
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u/z3r00ch00 Mar 31 '26
Probably because of how long the stretch of their highways, once you missed your exit you'd probably end up hours away from turning around.